House Hunting in Amsterdam: A Restored Triplex for $1.9 Million

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands and the country’s largest city, with about 875,000 residents. It has seen increasing home prices in recent years, although the growth slowed a bit in 2019. Data collected by Statistics Netherlands, the government’s national statistics agency, showed that the average home sale price in 2019 was 484,995 euros ($535,000), a 5 percent increase over 2018, following increases of about 13 percent year-over-year in 2017 and 2018.

Amsterdam is also the country’s most expensive city, according to a 2019 report by Dutch Rabobank, which found that the average sale price there in the second quarter of the year was 25 percent higher than in Utrecht and 67 percent higher than in Rotterdam, the second-largest city.

Kees Kemp, an agent-owner at the local Broersma Estate Agency, described Amsterdam as “booming” and “very international,” in an email. “The demand is very high, as the number of citizens is rising fast,” he wrote.

With development struggling to keep pace, “the market in Amsterdam is under pressure,” said Tjerk van der Linden, a managing director of Engel & Völkers Amsterdam. Among other factors, Mr. van der Linden and other agents pointed to the arrival of foreign companies that have moved their headquarters to Amsterdam because of concerns related to the Brexit referendum in Britain.

The influx of foreign businesses and buyers has some calling the Dutch capital the new London, although Pieter Joep van den Brink, the founder and broker of Vandenbrink, the Christie’s affiliate in Amsterdam, said the comparison is not entirely apt. Amsterdam may be vying to become Europe’s next financial center, he said, but the real estate market is behaving differently than London’s because people are primarily buying to homes to live in, rather than as investments.

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